The International 2018 Group Stage Betting Predictions

The Group Stage of The International 2018 has begun and the next 3 days will be full of Dota 2 betting opportunities. A total of 52 more matches await and the bookmakers will shower you with a huge variety of betting odds for them.

This article will give you a better understanding of who the participants are, what they did on day 1 and what will most likely happen during the Group Stage.

The groups

Group A

Team Liquid

LGD

Evil Geniuses

Mineski

Fnatic

Thunder

OG

Invictus Gaming

Winstrike Team

Group A is arguably the tougher of the two and the battle in it will definitely be fierce. No less than 4 teams in this group a top contenders for winning the Aegis of Champions at this edition of The International. These teams are Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, PSG.LGD and Mineski.

For sure, the 1st and the 2nd are stronger than the 3rd and the 4th, but when they meet each other, expect a lot of draws because their skill level is too close for any of them to run away with a 2 – 0 victory over another. Keep in mind that the matches will be Bo2 during the Group Stage, so the betting odds will be very high, regardless of your choice (1 – X – 2), simply because there are 3 options to choose from instead of 2. This of course also makes things trickier due to the fact that when betting on a match result you’re actually betting on 2 combined results (game 1 and game 2).

The 4 teams that are most likely to advance to the Upper Bracket of the Main Event are the ones mentioned above. As for the ones who will be fighting for their tournament lives, I would definitely mention OG, VGJ.Thunder and Invictus Gaming. All 3 of them, in spite of being very strong teams in lower tier tournaments, are considerably weaker than the rest of the pack at this level of competition. One thing you’ll want to do is bet against them whenever they are playing against a much stronger opponent.

Group B

Virtus.pro

Team Secret

Storm

Newbee

OpTic Gaming

Vici Gaming

paiN Gaming

TNC Predator

Team Serenity

In Group B, the 4 main candidates to qualify for the Upper Bracket of the Main Event are Virtus.pro Team Secret, Newbee, and VGJ.Storm. The first of these teams is by far the strongest and most likely to win the group, while the other 3 will probably draw a lot of matches among themselves.

At the other extreme, struggling for their tournament lives will be paiN Gaming, TNC Predator and Vici Gaming. One of these 3 is almost guaranteed to leave the tournament after the Group Stage. Which one, we’ve yet to see. But you should definitely bet against these teams whenever they face strong opposition.

Group Stage match schedule

The Group Stage will last for 4 days, starting on Wednesday (August 15th). Every day, the first series of matches will start at around 7 PM European Time. During the first 3 days, a total of 5 series of 4 simultaneous matches will be played per day. On the fourth day, only 12 matches will be taking place instead of 20.

Keep in mind that The International 2018 takes place in Vancouver, Canada. So according to where you live in the world, the matches will be easier or more difficult to watch. Luckily, the bookmakers tend to release the odds for each day ahead of time, so unless you’re interested in live esports betting, you got nothing to worry about.

Day 1 review

On day 1, some of the tier 1 teams disappointed their fans, while some of the underdogs achieved impressive results. Among the teams that heavily underperformed were Vici Gaming (0 W – 4 L), Team Secret (1 W – 3 L) and PSG.LGD (3 W – 3 L).